8th Ed. Normal Unit Formations

I've been lurking here at L-O for a while trying to soak up as much information as I can and Monday will be my first game with the LM! I'll be going out this weekend to buy all the materials to make myself magnitized movement trays and all that, but I don't want to waste too much plasticard.

So! What are the typical unit formations for the Temple Guard, Saurus Warriors, Saurus Cav, Skrox units, etc? I'm assuming the TG with Slann units are 6x4 (or 6x5), but I'm really not sure what the norm is, or what usually works best.

I play 2 guys every week usually, and their armies are Dark Elves, Bretts, Ogres and Dwarves and our games are usually 2500 points.

Thanks!

 

5 or 6 wide is fairly typical for Saurus, skinks are usuualy 5 wide unless they are in a Skink/kroxigor for mation then it depends on how many Kroxigor you have.

 

I'll more than likely be running 3 krox in the unit. I read that most people bring 10 skinks per krox, plus a few more if points allow. Skinks are 20mm base and Krox are 40mm, right?

 

Generally in my units I run my Temple Guard and Saurus bricks as 5 wide, and 4-5 deeps(I run groups of 20 so), while my Skinks ran 10 wide. Fielding my Saurus as a horde, I just put 2 of my movement trays side by side.

 

In tourneys I run TG 5 wide, less frontage is good
Normally 6 wide since they look more symetrical.

Krox I run 6 skinks wide with 3 Krox and 4 extra ranks ie 28-30 skinks 3 krox

Saurus I've been running 5 wide but I haven't enjoy much success that way, maybe wider is better?

 

Makes sense to me. Hell, they're 25mm bases and so are my chaos... I might be able to get away with only making trays for the skrox units.

Excellent.

 

Narower is better for hand weapons, wider is berrer for spears....

 

I've thought about horde formation for the saurus warriors because they have a chance to do a boat load of damage, and since they're I1 I thought the obvious choice would be GWs. I'm used to a block of Khorne Marauders with GWs so don't worry about telling me they would be hard to move around on the field.

Also, do the krox in a skrox unit usually run to the edge or are there skinks that surround them on the sides? I'm assuming it would look something like this:


(^taken from L-O)

Thanks again.

 

Either , but its safer for the Krox if they are surrounded by Skinks...

Ps. the chart is absolutely right.

 

don't forget that corner to corner counts as base contact as well.

 

You guys continue to be awesome.

Thanks!

 

The chart is wrong on one point, krox only count as taking up two ranks when calculating steadfast and rank bonusses, otherwise they count as being one model deep. Support attacks are calculated in models not rank equivalents.

If the unit was a horde the skinks in A4 to F4 would get supporting attacks as they are the additional rank behind a model eligible to attack. The skink in G4 would not get a horde suporting attack because the skink in front gets the attack (but he would get an attack if we had spear armed skink hordes!).

The main reason for the lack of hordes with saurus is that saurus are costed for having a double attack, but are only eligible for a single support attack. It is not very cost efficient to have deep saurus hordes while paying for double the attacks you can make. There is an argument to have a wider formation then your opponent to maximise the number of double attacks you can make with the unit. It is also the reason why HW saurus are preferred over Spear saurus for most people, HW are only very slightly superior to spears (and there are one or two instances where spears come out on top (opponent troop is very weak) but cost a point less.